Thread: Opening Disk Partition

Hello guys,
I have sucessfully open physical disk by using the CreateFile function and passing it the "\\.\\\\PHYSICALDISK1", but this methods opens a whole disk. I want to open an ext2 partion, given me disk number and partition number how can I do that???

Originally Posted by SMurf

I thought you could open individual drive letters?

Of course, if you haven't got an ext2 file system driver installed, then Windows will ignore it and the only way you'll get to it is by reading the MBR at the start of the drive and finding your own way there.

Try ext2ifs.

Actually I could have done this, but i am developing a software for browsing ext2fs so I have to do this stuff my self, so any help for MBR guys?

I think you can open a specific partition with the format \device\harddiskX\partitionX. A little more info in this post. Note: Partitions are 1 based. partition0 is the physical disk.

Another possible option is to open the physical disk and then use IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT to find out where your target partition starts. Use at your own risk.

Well IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT only provides funtionallity for winnt or above, I want to do it for win 98SE or above, in other words I should look for partition table in MBR? Am I right?